Before we get on a plane to Vietnam for nearly 3 weeks, we have to learn some stuff first. That way we go into the trip with a good base of knowledge so that we kind of know what’s happening in the far away country across the world. The first big topic we’re tackling is the Political Spectrum and the main Political Ideologies.

Going into this unit, I had very limited knowledge of the political spectrum and all the different ideologies. I have never had an interest in politics, but I realized that it’s important to know about each ideology so I am aware of what’s happening in the world, even if I’m not interested in politics.
To start off this unit, we went through a quick but content heavy boot camp of sorts. It was in the form of a lecture, which took multiple classes to get through completely. During the lecture, we were taking detailed and specific notes. Mine are below:

These notes were meant to help us remember all the different values and help us see the differences between the many ideologies. These notes really helped me see how each one is different from all the others, with some similarities here and there. Writing these notes helped me organize all the information and visualize it a bit better so I could remember it better.
After we did these notes, we were quizzed everyday by our teachers to ensure we were retaining the information. Each day we had a 10 question quiz, and the questions were always the same. The quizzes differed in their format, one day the whole quiz was given verbally, one day was digital, and one day multiple choice on paper, etc.  These quizzes showed me that I barely knew anything  about politics, and I should do a little bit of research on my own time. We pretty much did the quizzes until every student got 10/10, or at least really close to it. I remember getting like 3/10 on the first quiz but by the end I’m pretty sure I got 10/10. It felt good to see my progress as I learned more and more.

The next phase of the project was to look at the political spectrum. I had heard of it before, that there’s a right side and a left side. But I never knew how it all worked or what it really meant. It is actually both simple and complicated at the same time.

One thing I learned about it is that it has a vertical scale too. The more towards the bottom you are, the more Libertarian your values are. This means you value freedom of choice, voluntary association and individual judgement with a skepticism of authority and state power. If you’re more authoritarian, you favour enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom. The left side is pure communism, and the right side pure facism, with ideologies like conservatism and Liberalism.
To find out where we fall on the political spectrum, we took a test on the political compass website. Below is my personal place on the political spectrum:

I would say that I agree with this. As you can see, I fell to the left, and slightly down. Being closer to the bottom means I’m more Libertarian than Authoritarian, which means I value political freedom, freedom of choice, and individual judgement and understanding. Being on the left side means that I support social equality and disagree with the idea of social class separation. Both of these statements about my position make sense to me, especially after learning more about the political spectrum.